Last week, it was Belvedere.
This week, it’s Reebok.
Both ads portray men in a very negative light. The Belvedere ad portrays a man cheerfully grabbing a woman with a horrific look of fear on her face. The Reebok ad encourages men to “cheat on their girlfriends, not their workout.” Despite both companies quickly pulling them from the market, they were still published and endorsed the product.
Why would companies send the message that it’s okay to rape women? Or that it’s acceptable to cheat on them?
Or are we so numb to normal advertising that agencies now feel they must delve into the shocking underworld of miscreant behaviour to get their brands heard? Isn’t it a mixed message when we decry illicit behaviour by Kobe, Schwarzenegger, Anthony Weiner, Newt Gingrich, and Herman Cain but then an ad agency uses the same situations to sell their product?
When is it okay to use shock and awe advertising? Does advertising such as this encourage “bad” behaviour?
The reebok ad references the priorities of bachelor gym rats who are dating women who us terms like boytoy, put a ring on it and professional. If you’ve never used the phrase “pick your lane, not your nose” then this ad is probably hard to understand properly.
Smooth is not the opposite of non consent, awkward is. If Belvedere hadn’t decided to use a sexual idiom that ad may as well have been a picture of a boyfriend purposely farting during a tender moment. Asking for a blowjob in a crude way or asking for a blowjob from a familiar woman who isn’t a fan of fellatio does not equal rape. The author is not lying, but the author is seeing ghosts.
It’s more that texts are open to interpretation, and in that sense an advert is a text. You might not interpret that way, but it doesn’t mean that interpretation is invalid.
What interpretation? The author asks the question “Why would companies send the message that it’s okay to rape women?” That’s a definitive assessment. The author doesn’t ask why companies would create an ad that might possibly make some women feel uncomfortable. Completely different frames…
@Author: “The Belvedere ad portrays a man cheerfully grabbing a woman with a horrific look of fear on her face.”
Horrific? She’s more like surprised (more like “WTF is happening?”), and a bit shocked… not horrified or terrified.
It doesn’t look like rape at all; it looks like a dork and awful approach.
As much as I dislike those kind of ads, telling lies about them doesn’t help.
Wow
Yeah. She’s sitting on his lap and all. It’s shock. And a reaction that he intended to create.
The ad image connected with the slogan (the vodka will “go down” more smoothly than the woman will) indicates some level of non consensual sexual experience. There is no lie there. Her face looks more than surprised. She looks horrified. You may not see that, but that doesn’t mean the author is lying.
“the vodka will “go down” more smoothly than the woman will”
I think the ad refers to the guy “going down” on the woman NOT smoothly.
Anyway I looked at the picture more attentively and yes, she may look scared. And he may look joking or nasty. I think the characters are purposedly ambiguous.
So no lying, I apologize.
Cool.
That’s interesting that you’d think he was going to go down on the woman…Really, that didn’t cross my mind. Anyone else?
Men getting BJ’s or wanting them more than anything is probably a US trope (in this case negative), but I wonder if the text/narrative of the ad reads differently in other countries.
Never crossed my mind until just now. Definitely a unique perspective though and certainly has me thinking.
Publicity is publicity. You remember the ad along with the product. So, yeah, mission accomplished. An analogy: Yeah, we successfully performed a heart transplant. But . . . . the patient died. Guess what I’m saying is that they accomplished their goal of getting publicity and getting people to talk/remember. But . . . at what cost? I’m a guy who’s been married for almost 38 years and I won’t be buying any Reebok products again. And I’m sure I’m not the only one with that response. Bottom line? Stupid move, Reebok. Insulting to both men and women.
Wrong Buggsy. 25 years in the ad business, much of it working on Nike, I can tell you. Being a jack@ss isn’t the way to succeed long term. Look at Nike. There’s a difference between edgy, and @sshole.
Alright I’ll make the joke…….who thought it’d be a good idea to put a heteronormative advert in a GYM?! I mean, DUH! 😉 Anyway, on a more serious note…I’m pretty much fed up with advertising in general. It’s all so freaking manipulative. £10 says that whoever okayed this ad did it knowing full well it’d piss people off…because at least it’d get people talking about it. So a few weeks or months down the line you might still have ‘Reebok’ in your head but you won’t remember exactly why…and then you see a pair of Reebok’s and you end up… Read more »
Advertising is getting so crazy now I feel like it has to implode and change at some point. Advertising doesn’t work as well anymore, I think people are getting desensitized to it or are better at analyzing it, and they have to resort to crazier and more shocking campaigns to illicit a response. If it changes, hopefully it will change into something more positive or toed to a completely different economy. Something more sustainable. Or people won’t learn and we’ll fall into idiocracy.
When is it okay to use shock and awe advertising? Does advertising such as this encourage “bad” behaviour?
Ads such as that, encourages, reinforces and APPROVES of bad behavior; and hurt the roles of parents, who then would need to counteract those corrupt messages bombarded on children and young adults. That particular ad is an assault and insult to females, as well as making men out to be cheaters and losers.
That ad is also about MACHOness…just look at the image: muscular, manly. So if you work-out, you’re macho. And if you cheat it’s macho and manly too (what girl could resist your HOT bod?). DUMB AD.
😎 :-p 😮 :-s 😐 B-)
I don’t think it’s so much shock & awe as trying to be ‘on the cutting edge’. Advertizing agencies are always trying to on top of any changing attitudes in pop culture. I think it was simply a miscalculation on the ‘idea’ persons part. In the case of the Vodka ad,well, everywhere you turn, you keep hearing about ‘mommy porn’ (50 Shades of Gray) and how many women get”All tingly down below” when they read it. I mean when was the last time a book described as “1200 pages of graphicly described BDSM sex” made the top of the NYT… Read more »
This commented is limited to the Reebok ad:
Lighten. Up.
Wait, you’re telling the ad to lighten up?
“Why would companies send the message that it’s okay to rape women? Or that it’s acceptable to cheat on them?”
They’re not. They’re playing on the shock and horror of doing these things as a way of making an ad memorable.
But that’s the problem about advertising. It’s using the shock and awe, but advertising does (and wants) to shape your behavior, namely to buy their product. The messages that accompany the product are often internalized, mainly to give you more of a reason to buy the product. The beauty industry is a clear and obvious example. They want you to feel bad about yourself so you’ll buy their product. Fear and the desire for approval are good motivators to buy a product. I may be reading into this ad, but it seems the message in it is that if you… Read more »
I agree, Steph.
There’s a message here to men: You’re gonna cheat. Because that’s who you are, in your nature. If you’re gonna cheat, cheat on your girlfriend and spare your workout.
How about the assumption that a guy’s just simply not going to cheat?
I worked on some work for Reebok Crossfit that had nothing to do with this. Reebok killed it because it wasn’t ‘edgy’ enough. They’re so desperate to make news, any news, even if it’s stupid ugly news, that they’re marketing themselves incompetently. Fire whoever approved this. Immediately Not the agency, fire them next. But fire the incompetents at Reebok first. Immediately.